[Oer-community] Introduction to the discussion [Responding to Timothy Cook with a view to broader discussion of the issues he has posed]

[Tim Cook]

Hi Jane,

Thank you for your comments and an opportunity to correct a couple of
places where I could have been more verbose and explicit.

On Wed, 2010-10-06 at 17:43 -0600, Jane Ross wrote:

> Protecting and promoting original authors of all content should be of
> the utmost importance. Timothy, is this something you are promoting --
> or a possibility for consideration? There are numerous documented
> cross-cultural examples of situations where personal ownership of an
> idea or piece of work is not an individual value. I would like to see
> our OER community pressing on to recognize and value social systems
> where group-created products have equal value (perhaps superior value)
> with that of individual authors.

If you notice I used the plural "authors" and not the possessive
author's. So yes.  I promote the right of everyone to recognition for
their work.  Whether that be individually or as a global community.

>  Since these licenses are well
> established it should not be difficult to get approval through legal
> departments where some academics may be required as part of their
> contracts. There seems to be an assumption here that this community
> work is for "academics". 

No, there was no such assumption.  Just a comment regarding an
observation that I have made in the past regarding difficulties that
academics have releasing information.

> Knowledge and access to learning is much broader than the academic
> sphere; it is created, used and shared by a varied host of learners
> and knowledge creators; e.g., : 

Apologies.  I thought that point was obvious to the group here.

> Hole in the Wall project http://www.hole-in-the-wall.com/ and methods
> documented by Sugata Mitra and Community.

Thank you. I am also aware of Sugata Mitra's excellent presentation at
TED
http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_the_child_driven_education.html 

>  
> Interoperability/shareability:
> I think you are assuming the use of "foundational technology"? 

I have no idea by what you mean here.

> It would be a shame to create and circulate materials on off-shoot
> systems, only to lose what the creative commons has created. 

I agree.  That is why I am promoting open standards and open licenses.

> Common standards or specifications should be used where available in
> order to promote ease of use. For example; when creating content the
> Scholarly Works Application Profile
> http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/repositories/digirep/index/SWAP provides for
> consistent meta-data formats in order to increase discover-ability. In
> turn, SWAP is based on the commonly used Dublin Core Meta-data
> Initiative.  
>  
> In cases of meta-data exchanges there is the Statistical Data
> Meta-data
> eXchange specification (SDMX) http://www.sdmx.org  There are a number
> of
> subsets being developed specifically for aggregating purposes.  My
> research group is working with the World Health Organization on the
> SDMX
> Health Domain (SDMX-HD) http://sdmx-hd.org/ implementation. The
> message here is?

That openly available standards and specifications are available in many
areas and should be used and encouraged.
 
>  The work that this
> group is proposing will yield artifacts that will likely last for
> centuries. They may 'last' for centuries -- hopefully our goal is to
> create artifacts that will be used and have an influence for
> centuries.  

I probably should have used the word "endure".  However, please forgive
me since English is my first language.  :)

>   The software groups have various methods in place
> in order to judge the trust level of an individual. Do tell us more
> about these methods! 

I did give examples in the next several sentences.  If you would like to
investigate these further I suggest
http://weblogs.java.net/blog/turbogeek/archive/2004/09/how_do_you_run.html and http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-9821100-16.html or you could use a popular search engine with keywords like; "manage open source project".

Or the best teacher is to get involved with a project. 

I hope this has answered your questions and clarified any concerns.

Kind Regards,
Tim


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